Foster Named Chair of Planning Department

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Kathryn A. Foster, associate professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, has been named chair of the department, effective Jan. 2.

A UB faculty member since 1993, Foster has served as director of research in the UB Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth for the past four years. In this capacity she has been deeply involved with research and analysis of issues and initiatives of importance to the Buffalo-Niagara region, including regional planning, government efficiency, economic development and service delivery.

She is a founding member of the UB Governance Project and project director of its major publication, "Governance in Erie County: A Foundation for Understanding and Action."

Her scholarship focuses on governance, regions and regionalism, metropolitan decision-making and leadership, intergovernmental and inter-sectoral -- public, private, nonprofit and academic -- relations, and comparative government systems.

Foster's recent publications have addressed such issues as urban-suburban interdependence, "planning without plans," metropolitan governance and performance indicators for the Buffalo-Niagara region in the 21st century. Her monograph, "Regionalism on Purpose," was published last year by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass.

Foster holds a doctorate in public and international affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, a master's degree in city and urban planning from the University of California-Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in geography and environmental engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.

She is a fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2001-02 was a visiting fellow at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a member of the governing board of the Urban Affairs Association and the editorial board of the Journal of the American Planning Association.